Feeding your animals often brings additional pests to your yard. Chicken feed brings mice, which in turn bring more bird of prey, snakes, raccoons, and other chicken killers. Bird feeders bring magpies, raccoons, and other pests. Getting the right animal feeder is often one of the first steps in keeping unwanted pests from visiting.
Below, I’ve outlined my favorite animal feeders and why:
Best Chicken Feeders To Keep Mice Away
There are two types of chicken feeders that I really like in keeping mice away. They are both designed to keep rodents from accessing the food and only allow the chickens or ducks, or other fowl to feed.
The Treble Automatic Chicken Feeder opens and allows your chickens to eat when they walk up to it. It may require a little bit of training and showing your chickens how they use it, but once they do, new chicks will train very quickly by watching their peers. The steel door shuts when the chicken steps away and prevents mice from getting into the food.
It holds 20 pounds of food, which will keep about 6 chickens fed for 10 days or so. Of course, that depends on if your chickens are also free-range.
The Bucket Chicken Feeder requires the hens to stick their heads into the buckets. It prevents most of the spillage that occurs. Because it is in a bucket, mice can’t climb up to access the food. The eliminated food waste means that mice aren’t attracted to the area.
Best Bird Feeders
Bird feeders are important because many birdfeeders allow squirrels and chipmunks to access the bird seed. Plus, they allow magpies and other bully birds to keep the smaller birds away. That’s not the only problem, often birdseed is left on the ground afterward, which attracts mice, voles and other pests. These little pests then attract snakes, weasels, and other larger pests.
The Squirrel Buster bird feeders are designed so that anything of a larger weight closes the access to the birdfeed. This makes it easly for you to keep magpies, squirrels and other pests away from birdseed intended for smaller songbirds.
Squirrel Be Gone 4 Lb Bird Feeder
The Cage Bird Feeder allows smaller birds into feed but keeps out larger birds and squirrels through a cage restriction.
The Seedhoop catcher catches spilled birdseed to prevent a mess for rodents. Its the best solution I have so far, but I am looking for a caged option that’s dependable and with a base to catch the food. I’ll let you know when I find it.
